Metal Deep: Infinite - Damsels in Distress: Episode 1 by GX Knight

 

     

    “REAL” LIFE

     

    The Aussies call it a walkabout. I called it getting away from my boring life. I had to have a change, and waiting for change to find me was a fool’s dream. So it was on a rainy evening after finishing a shift slinging steaks to ungrateful rednecks at the local steakhouse when I decided it was time to grab life by its testicular fortitude, and rip myself a new beginning. Well, I felt that way until I got home and realized it had been about a month and a half since I cleaned. I then spent the rest of my night and wee-morning hours sipping on coffee while I cleaned dishes, sorted laundry, and mucked up something that appeared to have come alive from that small dark corner often gone unnoticed between my commode and bathtub.
     
    Get away? Who was I kidding? This was my life: Server Boy.

    Six nights a week you could find me at Steerhouse Steakhouse where I catered to John Q. Public’s voracious need for half-cooked meat. My existence was pretty much terrible, I stayed lonely, and I was always broke. How could this be? Allow me to rant it out for you:
     
    What people don’t realize about the outstanding citizens in my line of work is that most of us don’t get regular paychecks. The company gives us a barely-enough hourly stipend to cover what Uncle Sam demands. So, if I am going to eat, fix my little brown beater of a car, or help keep the lights on at home, then it’s going to come from that all important gratuity.

    I bust my overworked-bum to see it hit around twenty percent of a check total. I’m lucky if I get fifteen.
     
    For my little tips I smile when I’d rather tell someone to piss off, and I run around like a headless chicken as five different tables all need ten different things at the exact same time. It’s amazing how oblivious people are. Every table can be filled to capacity, the waiting area will be overflowing, and in fact, there will be children literally hanging from windows sills as people wait up to two hours to come have me bring them some kind of magical-meat that apparently cannot be found at the local food-mart. When did cooking become a lost art? Here’s the kicker, every table wants their meal as quickly as possible. They all demand that my service be to them first, everyone else in the restaurant be damned.

    It’s a glamorous life. Let me tell you. Everything you own starts to reek of restaurant. And it’s not that romantic woodsy smell one gets after grilling some steaks on the barby. It’s an offensive odor likened to some forms of sewer sludge. This post-work funk separates you from the rest of the civilized world. -A world who, after using you as their food-bitch, forgets your name.
     
    When you’re a restaurant server, people treat you as if you’re some kind of drop out. They assume you spend your days cooking meth and living off welfare when you’re not expecting “charity” (AKA the tip) after lavishing, what is essentially, a luxury service. I admit, there are plenty of us servers who do abuse drugs, stay drunk at most hours of the day, and treat each baby as a new tax or child support check, but I’ve got some banker, lawyer, and doctor stories that will make you shake your head and weep for the species as well. I’m just thankful I was taught to be responsible. Dad raised me right.

    I have to admit, it’s not all bad. Serving tables is a lot like a game. Every new guest that sits down is a challenge and a roll of the dice. I have come across just as many good patrons as I have bad ones, and there are still some generous people out there, but sometimes it’s them who really make what I do so hard.
     
    I barely have a hundred bucks to my name after bills. I would like nothing better than to sit down somewhere and make some single, hardworking mom’s night by dropping a couple of the other “Bills” (Bill is server speak for a hundred dollars) as payment for her hard work, but if serving tables paid that well, everybody would be